Mr. Speaker, there is no question. I think everyone in the House would agree that the country of origin labelling issue in the United States is really making it difficult for our industry.
A part of it is the confusion around how the system works and some of the plants getting up and running, and making sure they were making the right decisions in terms of what product was coming in so that it could in fact be labelled properly.
In fairness to the government, I will say that its challenge to the WTO needed to be done, but it needed to go further than that. The government needs to support our industry in the interim. It could have done that by changing the viability test and the reference margin to allow safety net money to get out there to producers. It is just a simple matter to do. I do not believe it would be a violation of the trade agreement.
I think we should put farmers first and the trade agreement second in this country for a change. We are being run over by the United States and the actions it takes when it does not abide by agreements. Maybe we need to look at interim labelling measures in this country. Maybe Canadians need to know what they are buying. Maybe we should be taking action against some of these countries that sell nothing, some of the retail chains in this country that sell nothing but American pork. Consumers need to know what is on their shelves.
In terms of the government going to the WTO, we know that is a long, drawn-out process. Even if we win the argument and even if the Americans agree to abide by the decision which I think we will win, in the meantime we will have probably lost thousands of producers in this country and will have lost that economic opportunity and the ability to have farmers in that industry in the future.